Everything's Harder

It's not that grief is intolerable in itself. I would guess it's a lot like my friend who lives with chronic pain. It hurts. It's there. Sometimes it flares and takes over life for a time, but mostly it doesn't. What it does is make everything harder. I'm less good at the things I'm good at. I make the mistakes I make more often. I'm slower to see them and it's harder to fix them. 

I feel it most in the space of relationships. My emotional capacity is depleted. Also memory and task management, probably the whole bucket of things they call "executive function". 

Of course it lands hardest on the one I'm closest to. Jamie is more with me than anyone has ever been. He pays attention. He cares. He spends hours and hours with me every day and holds me through the night. From the beginning, our relationship has been characterized by deep connection. It happened naturally at is sometimes does when you find your match. Even more, we worked at it. We named connection as thing we'd missed in our first marriages. We set an intention for making this marriage different, and we acted on it every day. 

I arrived with the tools and skills I'd learned in Imago training and hungry for a partner with whom to practice them. Jamie arrived with no idea you could work toward connection, but the same hunger for closeness. He eagerly engaged with the practices that sated that hunger for us both. We dialogued for hours. He shared the pain accumulated over decades and I mirrored and held him. He felt safe and connected as he had never felt before. So did I. 

We learned that we could be there for each other. We had the language to name our hurts, to show our vulnerability, to rewrite our history as a space not only of pain, but also of survival and growth. When one of us fell apart, the other held the pieces, honoring the brokenness and treasuring the whole. When we hurt each other was stopped to look at it. We changed what we could and found acceptance when we couldn't. 

New love's giddiness, relationship skills and a lot of work delivered the blissful relationship we both had craved and neither dared hope for.  

Until the giddiness crashed. Until the first moments of knowing that disaster had arrived in my life and the first thing I thought to do was reach for him. It hasn't been the same since. I haven't been the same.

We weathered the early days well. Jamie nurtured, supported and held. I put the rest of life on hold and did the things that needed to be done. Our daily dialogues stopped abruptly. I was too untethered to feel connected to anything, but our relationship held. It was the solid thing I could lean on day after day.

We had a wedding to plan, some of the giddiness came back. It was never going to be the same, but it was enough for the day. We were together and were building a life. The toll of grief was there, but it wasn't debilitating. We had a foundation of trust and connection and it held us up as we navigated our newlywed months, tacking to suit the winds and setting courses for our life ahead.

The thing about life is that even the best laid plans cannot always prepare you for stormy seas. When the wind gusts and the waves crash, it takes all the skill and strength you have just to stay afloat. In grief I'm not as skillful in my skills and not as strong in my strength. I can't bring myself to do the things I know to do, and I can't think what to do instead. 

They say nature sets us up for new love, lacing our blood with giddiness and attachment hormones that carry us through the first year or two, but those hormones run out. Then you need something else. We knew it was coming. We took the workshop. We learned the tools that can take the place of hormones and build a connection that is richer and stronger than new love could ever be. We tried to prepare for the rough seas that every couple hits. It worked. We'll make it, but I sure miss being me. 

The storms are coming all at once just now. Jamie remains the caring, smart, generous partner that I pledged my life to, but he no longer dazzles with the fantastical perfection my hormones had painted him with.  He's wonderful and complex and wounded. And mine. And I'm his in all that same complexity. That shift would be storm enough, but we have more. 

Rocky transitions abound: a move, a new house, a new town, a new community all. Also retirement and sabbatical. The currents are pushing in many direction at once. A gale called Christmas is blowing full force with varied traditions, fears, and expectations. Family and travel to come.

And grief. The first Christmas without Ryan, a riptide through it all. It's a gauntlet I need all my faculties to run and I don't have them. 

Jamie has his own stresses and wounds surfaced by Christmas and travel and moving and new things. The woman he fell in love with would have held him through that. When the strain leads to sharp words or painful distance, I want the capacity to stay present, to partner him, to keep my own demons at bay. It was a superpower I used to command: Joyfully, patiently walking with another through the rich space of pain and anger for as long as it took to find the other side. I especially loved doing it for the man I love. 

It is a desolate and almost despairing feeling to see the thing that is needed and watch myself not doing it. It is this day's toll of grief. Ever-present, but more costly now, when I need the most of me. 

Some days all I can do is keep doing the next thing. So far it has been enough. I'm learning. Expectations shift to meet capacity. Acceptance dawns slowly. Rest and a slower pace beckon. Sabbatical will make room for the most important things, even when they, and everything, are harder. 

Drafted Dec 13, 2022